Judith
by Woodwarbler
Summary: Short story i wrote for English class. Uses characters from Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner. Enjoy!


Judith

_Hi guys, this is an old English assignment, a short (5 pages of a word document) fiction based upon _Absalom, Absalom _by William Faulkner. I always felt rather sorry for Judith, and thought she deserved a voice in the story, so I gave her one. There isn't any pre-existing fan fiction for_ Absalom, Absalom_, and I can't figure out how to put a story up for a new book, so I put this under_ As I Lay Dying_. If anyone can help me with this, please review and tell me how. _

I have only truly wept once in my life.

I was made of the hot steamy swamp and born in a house pulled from the moist hot air and mud of the mire, born cursed and trapped by my birth of the swamp and pulled from the earth by my father's determination as surely as the bricks of the mansion that trapped me.

I watched the world though my mother's black hair with my father's pale cold eyes from an early age and became determined to shed the lush manacles of wisteria and steam that bound me to the swamp, to my birth and parents. I ran through my childhood with my brother and my half-sister and could sense how they too felt trapped by life, though my sister was trapped by the ineradicable color of her skin. I coldly watched my father fight with half-savages in a thoroughly savage manner and dreamed of what another life could hold.

Dragged to a church filled with petty minds that lingered more on the earthly than the divine I still raced the horses on the way there, imaging that I was racing away from the strictures of my birth, the omnipresence of my father.

My brother escaped momentarily to a distant college to obtain what slight knowledge was bequeathed to rude country farmers, though still not far away enough to leave forever while I danced in my adolescence with white-powdered shoulders in silk dresses under sparking chandeliers, the false façade of my life, while from the crude instruments of the swamp issued the music of my birth. I repressed my dissatisfaction with this false country glamour and was called cold and isolated. Isolated I was by choice, isolated from the low mud of the swamp that marked me as surely as the pale eyes bequeathed to me by my father. I knew the mansion in which the parties were held was no more than the swamp bedecked with gold just as my father was no more than a driven person from obscure origin.

When my brother's first letter full of infatuated references to Charles Bon came home in the hands of the courier, I saw in his clumsy enthralled language the key to my freedom, the path to liberation from the curse of my birth, the swamp, my father. I soon began to share my brother's interest in the exotic city-dweller, though I carefully concealed my attention in an impassive veil. When Bon came home with my brother for a brief holiday, I seized him as surely as did my mother with her clouds of excited immaterial words. He was my key to freedom, a life away from my father's swamp-mansion.

When my mother towed me to the tiny hamlet (so unlike the grand cities I dreamt of!) on the countless shopping trips for the supplies of my future wedding to the yet-unclaimed suitor, I feigned a disinterest interpreted by others as a youthful detachment from reality. I pictured my future so far away from the wisteria-scented swamp air of my childhood while all others saw were the two pale eyes gazing through the black hair at nothing, invisible ghosts of a girl's fancies.

The few visits of my brother and his idol before that fateful Christmas that brought the war on its heels seemed to assure my future free of the swamp, my father. I tolerated the poverty, the want of the war, for the marriage that was sure to come after. I didn't even mind the death of my mother when her fragile vivacious desperate sparkle was put out by the sudden departure of my brother and my suitor, as her death meant the severance of one more cord attaching me to the swamp of my birth.

I eagerly prepared a hodgepodge gown out of linens destined for bandages when I received news that I was soon to be married and was just piecing the last parts together when I was informed that my suitor was dead. My brother explained his actions to me, but I refused to believe all he said and I was unable to grieve, instead containing my anger in an emotionless exterior. If only those around me had known what furies that granite face hid.

Then my father came home.

The moment I saw my father's face I knew that everything my brother had told me about Bon had been true. How many similarities between their faces became apparent as I gazed at my fathers aged visage! That was when the bitter tears came, the moment I realized that I would never escape the curse of my birth, when I appreciated how vain my hopes of escape from the curse of my birth had been, how strong the bonds that tie me to my father's shadow and the swamp had been all the time. The wisteria had never begun to wither. I now knew that no matter where I might try to escape to, my father's shadow would precede me, the mud of the swamp would stick to me no matter how I scrubbed.

Now life is a tasteless, hopeless continuation of breath in my lungs and food through my throat. Nothing can ever matter and my every movement is futile.


End file.
